The frequency with which diverse performers gather in the recreation of diverse repertoire in this western Franklin County haven of great music has given Mohawk Trail Concerts an unofficial motto; music old and new with artists from near and far. This weekend illustrated the value of that motto.

Born in Argentina, Estela Kersenbaum Olevsky is Professor Emeritus of Piano at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, where she chaired the piano department for more than two decades. She has performed around the world in solo recitals and with a broad range of chamber music collaborators, from William Bolcom and Billy Taylor to the Lark Quartet and the Berlin Philharmonic Festival Soloists.

Matthew Hunter began studying violin at age seven with Olevsky's late husband Julian, who passed away in 1985. At age 27 Hunter switched to viola while studying with Michael Tree, violist of the Guarneri Quartet. In 1996 he became the first American string player to win a position in the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. In addition to his work with that ensemble, he is Director of the Berlin Philharmonic Stradivari Soloists.

Eugene Drucker is a founding member of the Emerson String Quartet, now in its 32nd year, and an active soloist with orchestras throughout the U.S. and Europe. Roberta Cooper (Drucker's wife) was a founding member of the Wave Hill Trio, a member of the Berkshire Bach Society, and a soloist on Linda Ronstadt's latest CD of jazz standards, "Hummin' To Myself."

Playing the Brahms Quartet, these four soloists attained and projected a level of pooled resources and intensity far greater than the sum of their individual energies. They were elevated to that higher plane of mental and physical communion and artistic ecstasy to which we are only admitted while playing exquisitely crafted chamber music.

By their arrival at the third movement, a glorious E-flat major Andante containing a sparkling (eventually roaring) march in C that rivals the finale of the composer's first symphony (that he would write 15 years later!) in grandeur, pianist and string players were acting in perfect conjunction, inhabiting one world of pulse and color, as if channeling Brahms' own innermost thoughts. Their brilliant execution of the fiery Hungarian-dance finale rocketed the audience to its feet in an instant standing ovation.

Drucker, Hunter, and Cooper opened the concert with Mozart's "Divertimento in E-flat" K. 563. The work's unassuming title, suggesting a plaything of an idle moment, could not be further from the truth of the piece itself, which contains some of Mozart's most adventurous harmony and sophisticated counterpoint. The trio seemed to have agreed on certain stylistic approaches, like the tendency of slightly delaying an after-beat entrance into passagework, then tumbling ahead to make up the time toward the climax of the phrase. Such manipulation of the pulse only works when everyone shares the concept, and these three world-class players made it work. As three soloists, they each approached vibrato from a different perspective as well, employing it for subtly different expressive and timbral effects, but the collective impression was one of shared purpose and commitment.

At the heart of the concert, Olevsky presented portions of Olivier Messiaen's mammoth solo piano opus "Vingt regards sur l'enfant Jesus," in recognition of the 100th anniversary of the composer's birth. Basking in the full range of Olevsky's expressive articulation from the tenderest caresses to muscular, deep-toned strokes of the keys, one's only regret was that she did not have a nine-foot concert grand piano at her disposal to display the galaxy of volumes and colors contained in Messiaen's singular style and octatonic harmonic language